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I gave a harrumph to June and said, a bit testily, “I’ll have you know I was working on a song last night.”

June nodded her head. “Did it involve two blonde girls screaming?”

I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I knew that June was just kidding with me. She didn’t have any jealousy over me for the simple reason that I wasn’t the main focus in her love life.

* * *

I got permission from Mr. Proilet to practice for our upcoming audition at Puppy Dawg’s with the people who were going to be in that band after school.

Kristen was there, and she brought most of her guitars with her, and so was Gerry. In fact, the two of them were hooking their guitars into a mixer that looked a bit familiar.

“Is that the mixer from the studio?” I asked.

Kristen shook her head. “No, I bought two of them. It saves having to lug a bunch of amps everywhere.”

I handed out my music to everybody, and explained about the “wall of sound” type of style that I was envisioning. I explained, “This is a basic beat, and once we get it down, we can improvise off it a whole bunch of ways.”

It took nearly forty-five minutes to get the wind and horn parts down. As I did that, Kristen was working with Gerry and Amy to get the guitars and piano parts going.

Finally, I decided to put the thing together. I gave Roy the “She’s a movie star” line, and told him to use it or scat sing to the same meter for the melody.

“You don’t have words for this?” Roy asked.

“Not yet. This song has been going through my head for a while, though.”

Roy shrugged.

I tapped my baton, and got everybody ready and started with the bass line played by Kristen and Amy with her left hand. After four bars, the horns came in with the winds, and they all sounded pretty good.

Finally, I signaled to Roy. He sang his lines, but surprised me by doing it in a falsetto about an octave above what I told him. I didn’t stop the song… jazz is about improvisation, of course, and if this didn’t work out, well, at least Roy gave it a shot.

The interesting point is that Roy had great judgment: the falsetto worked.

The song sounded great, even though every line was “She’s a movie star!” and tended to get boring.

After that, we did a couple of standard jazz tunes, and then another song that I thought would make a great feature.

We didn’t let out until about 4pm.

“I don’t think the next rehearsal will go this long,” I assured everybody. “I really wanted to get through the basics before working on an actual repertoire.”

As Kristen and I were walking out to the parking lot, a fellow junior named James Zane approached me. Nobody called him that name, but instead referred to him as “Zaniac,” a nickname he earned as the class clown in elementary school, a reputation that he maintained into high school.

“Jim? I’ve been waiting to talk to you.”

“What’s up, Zaniac?”

“I’ve been talking to some people, and they said you were helping with the talent show.”

I nodded. “Yup. Did you want to do something?” I couldn’t imagine what Zaniac would do at a talent show, but I was intrigued at his interest.

“Um, well… I had some ideas… not as a performer, but… you know… for some other people.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Have you talked with these other people?” It was just like Zaniac to “volunteer” some unsuspecting people, who wouldn’t know about it. Of course, they would get in trouble when they didn’t show up.

“Most of them told me to talk with you or Ms. Kendall.”

Ah. I finally understood Zaniac’s problem. The teacher had a fundamental distrust of the boy, and I couldn’t say that he didn’t deserve it.

“So, what are your ideas?”

Zaniac looked at Kristen a bit nervously. “It might take some time to go over all of them. I know you have fifth period lunch, right? I could skip gym and talk with you tomorrow.”

“I guess…” I didn’t want to sound as if I was condoning a student to cut class.

“Coach Dillard doesn’t mind,” Zaniac assured me. “As long as I don’t do it too often. He’s kind of cool with that.”

“If you say so.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

* * *

Zaniac was true to his word, and approached the cheerleader table in the lunchroom during fifth period. All of the cheerleaders eyed him dubiously, as if daring him to approach them, which didn’t seem to phase Zaniac a bit.

“Oogie? Could we talk about my ideas?” Zaniac indicated an empty table in the corner of the room.

“Sure,” I said. I turned to the people at my table and said, “Please excuse me. I’m not sure how long this will take.”

The two of us went to the table where we could talk more privately. Almost immediately, he started giving me his ideas.

“You know the football quarterback, Ted Evans? I have an idea for him as a singer…”

I listened to Zaniac’s ideas, and found myself laughing more than once. This kid certainly had a flare for coming up with strange but wonderful ideas. Every one of them was possible—assuming the student he suggested was willing to go along.

One idea didn’t sit well.

“Zaniac, I’m not performing at the concert!”

“I’ve heard,” Zaniac said, nodding, “but this isn’t having you play music or anything.”

“I’m still not sure…”

“Listen, Oogie. I just wanted to do this kind of bit. I figured that if you were a part of it, it could be fun.”

I thought about Zaniac’s idea, and finally decided to see how important this was to him. “OK, here’s what you do. If you want to be on stage, you’ll have to clear it with Ms. Kendall. I’d suggest you have a meeting with her and Mr. Proilet.”

“Mr. P. doesn’t have much of an opinion of me, either.”

I smiled. “Zaniac, if you really want to do this, you’ll have to get their permission.”

I saw the gears turning in the boy’s head. Finally, he got up and shook my hand. “Thanks, Oogie.”

As Zaniac started walking away, he turned, and asked, “Do you think your girlfriend Kristen would be willing to do a bit?”

I laughed. “Don’t push it, Zaniac! She’s no longer a student here.”

Zaniac shrugged. “I’ve seen her helping out in the music department. She was with you yesterday in the music room.”

I continued shaking my head, and Zaniac smiled and left the cafeteria.

Back at the cheerleader table, I found my sister was the current subject of conversation. Specifically, it was the subject of her upcoming “Sweet Sixteen” party.

The cheerleaders planned to give Merry a private cheerleader-only party when they realized that they also wanted to invite Roy Fennel. Adding a boyfriend into the mix meant inviting other boyfriends, and having the party at somebody’s house became a problem.

I turned to June and asked, “Didn’t you tell them Kristen’s idea?”

June looked perplexed. “What idea?”

There was this idea that Kristen suggested last weekend, but I just realized that June hadn’t gone with us to Chicago.

“Sorry! I forgot. You didn’t know, did you?”

June repeated, “What idea?”

“Remember the American Legion hall where we held Kristen’s birthday party? Kris said that she could rent the hall again.”

“That’s a big hall,” Sherry said. “We’d only have about thirty people.”

“Add another ten for my parents, some relatives and other friends,” I suggested. “Consider it our present to my sister.”